National (U.S.)

"A Massachusetts solar company to which Mitt Romney personally delivered a $1.5 million loan when he was governor has gone belly up, leaving him vulnerable to the same 'picking winners and losers' charges that he's been lobbing at President Barack Obama over Solyndra."

"The president's reelection campaign wasted no time noting Romney's support for Lowell-based Konarka Technologies, which announced Friday it had filed for bankruptcy protection with plans to lay off more than 80 workers and liquidate its assets.

"Three conservation organizations today filed legal action challenging the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's failure to update air quality standards for acid rain."

"When award-winning West Virginia anti-coal activist Maria Gunnoe went to Washington, DC, last week, she was prepared for obstructionist tactics. She was prepared to face icy stares and hard questions from Republican lawmakers. She was not prepared to be branded a pedophile."

"Five of the biggest names in American business have formed a group to accelerate the development and use of plant-based plastic."

"For many people, ecotourism evokes a picnic in Muir Woods in California, perhaps, or counting endangered sea turtles on a Costa Rican beach or spending the night in a tree house with gibbons in Laos. Andrew Blackwell, a Brooklyn-based author and journalist, sees it differently. His idea of an interesting trip is less about beauty than environmental devastation."

"SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- The United Nations is haunting California's El Dorado County."

"

"A federal judge asked the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to reexamine its decision to reject citizen calls to restrict the use of antibiotics in animal feed, court filings showed. The latest ruling is the second such setback for the FDA over concerns that overuse of antibiotics in animal feed is endangering human health by creating antibiotic-resistant 'superbugs'."

"As the climate gets warmer, so do the rivers and lakes that power plants draw their cooling water from. And that is going to make it harder to generate electricity in decades to come, researchers report."

"In an article in the journal Nature Climate Change, scientists measured temperatures now and projected what they would be at midcentury. The temperatures vary according to the time of year, and, even if the extremes remain similar, they will be more frequent -- meaning that the water will be too warm to allow full power production, they predict.

"In the menagerie of Craig Venter’s imagination, tiny bugs will save the world. They will be custom bugs, designer bugs -- bugs that only Venter can create. He will mix them up in his private laboratory from bits and pieces of DNA, and then he will release them into the air and the water, into smokestacks and oil spills, hospitals and factories and your house. "

"At 58, retired machinist Bruce Revers is tethered to his oxygen machines -- a wall unit when he’s at home, a portable tank when he’s out. The simple act of walking to the curb to pick up his newspaper is a grind."